Machiavelli
by DreadNot
Summary: The end of the attack on London brings painful changes wrought by a former ally. Dark. Warning for character death and disturbing activity by a canon character. AU Now complete.
1. The End of the Beginning

_Warning: I write some fairly dark stuff, but this one likely takes the cake. There will be massive amounts of canon character death in this fic. I do not guarantee a happy ending or an ending you'll even like. All I guarantee is that it will end after chapter six. _

_Standard disclaimer applies. I make no claim of ownership to the characters. They belong to Kohta Hirano and whatever corporate entity owns the Hellsing portion of his soul. Should the real owners ever have the masochistic urge to read and use my writing, I will be flattered rather than litigious._

* * *

London was burning. Again. 

They would rebuild. Again.

But things would never be the same.

Sir Integra Hellsing stood in a ruined London street and looked at one of the many examples of what had been lost and would never be regained. She stared into the glaring red eyes of a man she had always thought of as more than a servant. There was no longer anything in those eyes that she recognized.

Despite the pain in her heart at the defilement of a once fine man, the leader of the Hellsing Organization kept her feelings off of her face. She looked past the resurrected Angel of Death she had always known as Walter Dornez to the creatures responsible for his condition.

The soldiers that surrounded them were nothing – pawns. They would do as they were ordered. The real players in this game were in front of her – the towering Captain her files named Hans Günsche, the freakishly attired man in the bloodstained trench coat known only as Doc, the adolescent cat boy she had seen as Krieg's envoy, and the Letzes Bataillons' Stürmbannführer himself - the rotund little man with the seemingly benevolent smile. "What do you hope to achieve with this show of corruption, Krieg?" she asked him.

The man she had referred to as Krieg stepped forward, despite the cautioning hand Captain Günsche placed on his shoulder. He smiled at Walter as he spoke to Integra, "This has nothing to do with shows, Miss Hellsing. This man has been a thorn in my side for more than sixty years. When I had the opportunity to allow him to pay me back for all he has cost me, how could I refuse?"

Integra watched Krieg as he moved toward her. She was alone among enemy vampires. She had been relatively safe with Seras on a rooftop, she had thought, until Krieg's soldiers had swarmed their position. She didn't know what Seras' condition or situation was like, or if she even still existed. The last Integra had seen the petite vampire, she was being buried under the onslaught of Krieg's forces. Seras had been through a lot that night; Integra hoped the girl would survive to learn from it.

"What's next, Major?" Integra watched for her opening. She either had to hold out for something to change, or hope that she could force them to kill her swiftly.

"I believe, Miss Hellsing, that we will talk for a while. When we are done with our chat, we will escort you to Doc's laboratory and we will demonstrate for you exactly how we enlisted your Walter in our cause." He licked his lips, "You will make a superb soldier."

_Alucard! Seras!_ Integra cast about with her mind, searching for the familiar feel of Alucard, hoping to find Seras if he would not answer. She didn't hold out much hope for Alucard. His seals had been fully opened and he would only respond if he felt like it. She did not have the strength of the seals to draw him out of the blood lust he was indulging. There was a good chance that even if he were disposed to help her, he would not hear her until it was too late.

"We're going to talk? I suggest we talk about what you have done to my retainer. Walter was no virgin and he was loyal to the Hellsing Organization and family. How did you pervert him into a vampire in your service?" _Give me the keys, you pig. Show me how to defeat you._

"You don't want to talk about my goals in your capitol city? Perhaps my plans for your Alucard and his unlikely child?" The Major smiled mockingly.

"You have already made it eminently clear that your goals in war are nothing more than that there be war. I see no purpose in attempting to have a rational discussion with an irrational person." She sneered as she continued, "You cannot harm Alucard no matter what delusions you harbor; there is nothing I need to know about Seras that you can tell me; what you have done to Walter is of more immediate concern in my opinion." Integra clenched her fists to keep from showing any weakness with the movements of her hands. She could feel her body wanting to shake with the stress and rage and fear that had built up and she would have none of that. Of the betrayals of the past days, her body would _not_ be one of the traitors.

"We have not spent a human generation studying and experimenting for nothing. It may not be as simple to effect the transformation as a vampire bite, but as you can see, it doesn't take us long to complete the task."

From the corner of her eye, Integra thought she saw Walter make a slight movement, but when she looked at him, he was as impassive as he'd been since she'd been deposited here by her captors. Apparently she wasn't the only one to have noticed, though, because Doc moved forward to examine Walter more closely. She watched as he took Walter's wrist, almost as though he was taking a nonexistent pulse. When he flipped through his lenses before examining Walter's wrist, she realized the Nazi was examining a braided rope that wrapped around her former butler's wrist like a manacle. He mumbled something over the fetter before leaning down to murmur in Krieg's ear.

_Seras! Alucard! If you two don't want a chained vampire as a Master, I suggest you get your arses here soon! _Integra sent out her call again and surveyed the soldiers surrounding her, trying to determine how she might best obtain a weapon or force one of them to kill her before it was too late.

She refused to admit to herself how relieved she was when she heard Seras respond, _I'm on my way. _

Integra quickly relayed details of her location and situation to Seras with a warning about Walter's condition. She needed to stall before they took her to a more defensible location. "Walter, are you in there?"

Walter's attention sharpened on her, but his expression didn't change. "Walter, I ordered you to come back. If you can break out of what they've done, you can still fulfill your order. Remember who and what you are!" She saw him shift again and realized this time that the movement was his fettered wrist twitching, almost a tic.

Integra took that as a sign to press on. "Walter, you know who you are. You're Hellsing's Angel of Death and you do not serve Millennium!" The twitch seemed slightly more pronounced.

Doc spoke for the first time, advancing until he towered over her, "You will stop speaking now or I will be forced to take your ability to speak. Your larynx will regenerate after the change, after all."

Integra tried to keep her expression neutral, but she felt a surge of triumph. They were afraid of Walter getting loose!

"You're thinking that you can free him from our control and use him to kill us and escape, but you don't understand." Doc's voice made her hackles rise and her fists clench. "Your butler's seals keep him from running loose. He is what you'd call a sociopath now; it's part of the accelerated process. Releasing him would be signing your death warrant."

His attention wandered for a moment before he casually spoke over his shoulder to Krieg, "Imagine if we could set her against him in a challenge after she is changed. What a spectacle it would be."

Krieg laughed and was in the middle of his response when he was bowled off his feet by a small figure that had come rocketing out of the sky. Integra recognized the bloodstained form of Seras Victoria as the Hellsing leader took advantage of Doc's distraction to call out to Walter, "Kill them, Walter! Kill them and take back your soul!"

Seras attacked the Major with all the fury she'd turned on Jolene earlier. This was the man who was responsible for everything. Every death, every horror - all the work of this creature she was rending with her teeth, claws and the slicing edges of her new shadowy arm.

She lashed out at the hands that brutally tore her away from her prey. Her jaw shattered when the hulking Captain punched her in the face. Seras thought she could hear Integra shouting something while someone else tried to shout her down, but she didn't have time to give her attention to that when she had to fend off the vampire's attack. She could sense all the other vampires around them, but they hadn't opened fire on the bit of chaos that had erupted in front of them.

A small voice reminded her to concentrate on the vampire trying to tear her head off before worrying about anything else. Seras focused on dodging and penetrating the Captain's defenses. He was too big for her to get near, but the part of herself that she recognized as Captain Bernadette guided her to landing some blows against him without taking too much damage of her own.

Schrödinger ducked in and pulled the Major away from the fighting vampires. Krieg laughed even as his adjutant helped him to stand. This was everything he'd been working for. He ignored the grievous injuries Seras had inflicted in favor of watching his Captain at work.

Integra had been shouting at Walter and was gratified to see him turn to watch Captain Günsche instead of remaining impassive. She exhorted him to help Seras and punish Millennium for what they had done.

"Be silent!" Doc clamped a hand over Integra's mouth. He growled when she bit down on his hand and shoved an elbow into his bare midriff, but retaliated by brutally jerking her back and wrapping an arm around her throat. She was unable to make any more sound than a strangled gasp while she clawed at his arm.

Walter's eyes flicked between the ongoing fight between Seras and the Captain, and Integra where she dangled from Doc's grasp. When Integra went completely limp, Millennium's new toy began to play on his own.

Doc had no time to react when Walter tore the rope off of his wrist and flicked it at the man holding Integra. Moments before it hit the startled scientist, Walter's wires swept out and cut the symbol of his slavery into small pieces that pelted the Millennium vampire. A delicate web of death settled over Doc and cut a ninety-degree arc through the circle of soldiers assembled behind him. Walter shifted his hands in his deadly game of cat's cradle, drawing the strings through his teeth. He watched with grim pleasure as Doc and the rank of soldiers were decapitated before returning to dust.

As soon as his wires were free of the disintegrated vampires, he swept them through another third of the circling soldiers before being interrupted by the figures of the Captain and Seras as they continued to fight.

Integra opened her eyes in time to see the first strong emotion Walter had shown since she'd been brought to the Major and his minions. His snarl was pure vampire, showing more teeth than a human would have in a mouth larger than any human's. Her faithful servant was utterly alien and Integra knew then that there would be no return to the old days. She scrambled to retrieve one of the fallen soldiers' machine guns while Walter leapt onto the back of the Captain, garroting him with his wires.

Captain Günsche put one hand up in time to keep Walter's razorwire from decapitating him. Blood wept out around the cuts in his hands, but it failed to sever bone the way it should. The Captain's attention was divided between the weight on his back and the berserk vampire in front of him.

The remaining soldiers had drawn around the Major. They seemed unsure about firing at the battling trio of vampires, but a pair of the soldiers skirted the melee, apparently to retrieve Integra before she got away.

Integra drew deep breaths as she fumbled for the stock of the weapon. She was still trying to clear the black spots that occluded her vision when she turned and shot the two vampires who were coming for her.

Seras looked at Walter where his face showed over the Captain's shoulder. They had the huge man pinned between them, with Walter's wires helping to keep the Captain from using his full strength or speed to defend himself. An unspoken agreement passed between them; first Walter, then Seras, lunged to bury their faces on either side of the big man's neck.

Integra took in the scene at a glance. She fired into the clump of soldiers circling the Major to buy time for Walter and Seras to finish off the vampire they had pinned between them. She quickly scrambled for cover behind a post box; it was pitiful shelter, but it was better than being in the open in the middle of the street.

Both Walter and Seras took wounds from the soldiers, who began firing wildly, not caring if they hit the Captain any longer as long as they could hit their Hellsing enemies. The potent blood they were drinking healed each injury almost as fast as it was sustained. When they had drained the Captain to the point of desiccation, Walter pulled his wires away, and Seras threw the corpse at the remaining Millennium members.

Walter stripped the Major of his remaining guards with an ease that Seras envied. The wires dropped like silk threads out of the air and tore each of them to pieces, leaving the Major and his little envoy standing alone.

Integra stood and joined her two vampires. The Major was unarmed as was Schrödinger, but the catboy did not share his commander's comfortable grin. Krieg put his hand on his subordinate's shoulder and said, "You are dismissed, Warrant Officer."

Schrödinger didn't wait, but turned and ran. Walter aimed for him with his wires, but Krieg intercepted them, allowing them to wrap around his body, and allowing the smaller vampire to get away. Integra spat, "Get him!" and Seras was off in a flash of bloodied uniform and orange hair.

The Major was smiling at Integra. "Do you think you've won?" He looked from her to Walter. "Do you think your butler is your knight in shining armor?" He began to laugh. "Tell her butler, are you going to save her from the monsters?" The harder he laughed, the more the wires cut into him. He was encircled in thin, deep cuts around the entirety of his body and every motion pulled the wires deeper into his flesh.

"I suppose, Stürmbannführer, that depends on which monsters you mean." Walter replied calmly. Integra turned to see a smile on Walter's face she did not recognize. The vampire who had once been Hellsing's most trusted servant tightened his wires around Major Krieg slow centimeter by centimeter, relishing every moment while he slowly cut his old enemy into bite-sized bits.

Integra was spattered by a fine spray of blood when Walter shook his wires off before retracting them into the rings that housed them.

"Walter, I know that what they did to you was horrible, but there's no reason to forget decorum. Stop looking at the blood on my face like a mid-morning snack."

Walter delicately licked the spatters off of his own hands before responding, "Ah. So sorry. This will take some getting used to."

"Indeed." Integra watched Walter's display without letting her feelings show on her face. "I am relieved you broke loose, Walter. How did you do it?"

"Doc warned the Major that he hadn't finished with me, but the little tyrant didn't want to listen; he wanted to play with his new toy. Seeing you, hearing you, that helped. Seras' arrival helped as well. What gave me the strength to break loose was seeing the Captain. Seeing him do to Seras what he did to me when I was fourteen made my hatred break through their incomplete seals. My hatred boiled off everything they did to control me. Leaving me empty."

"Hopefully, you will have time to heal that, Walter. We need to find Seras." She looked around for clips for the machine gun. While she picked a few up, she said, "I'm just glad you're free, Walter. I thought I had lost you."

She turned at the ice in his voice, "But I'm not free yet, Integra."

•••

Seras followed Schrödinger's scent through the wreckage of London. She had to stop when she encountered a trio of Krieg's soldiers along the way, but she doggedly kept to his trail. She was about ten minutes away from where she had left Integra with Walter when a pain so monumental hit her that she was thrown to the ground.

The pain sounded like screams, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all with her Master's voice, all in unison. She curled on the ground wrapped around her agony. Tears streamed from her good eye, but she couldn't hear her whimpers for the anguished cries that were coming from Alucard.

She didn't know how long she lay there, washed in an awful grief, before a buffer wrapped around her. The buffer smelled like Pip, and after a time, the sound of soft singing in French began to dull the sounds of the screams.

She was insensible to the slight figure of Millennium's surviving Werewolf as he watched the one-armed, one-eyed vampire while she cried on the ground. Once, he directed approaching soldiers to go a different direction that none would see her in her weakness.

•••

Walter licked fresh blood from his lips and looked down at what remained of the Hellsing bloodline. "I haven't been free since I lost my family and took up arms for the Hellsing family and for England."

He turned and walked away from Integra's body. "Now I'm free."


	2. Necropolis

_Seras?_

It was cold. Why hadn't she remembered to bring her old quilt into her coffin with her? It always got cold down in the dungeon. Why Walter thought that she only needed a box with no amenities to be comfortable was beyond her.

_Seras, it's time to get up._

She shifted restlessly, reaching for her pillow. Her eye snapped open when she felt the gravel under her cheek. Seras was lying next to a pile of rubble in the gutter of a London street. Everything came back to her in a rush and the blackness that lurked at the edges of her mind was an attractive refuge. She wanted to let herself slip into that darkness and forget everything around her when she thought of Integra.

Seras pushed herself to her feet and looked around. She was the only moving thing on the street. London felt like a necropolis; everywhere she stretched her senses, all she felt was death or the agents of death. Even the Iscariots she touched when she reached out felt like avatars of death rather than humans. She did not feel Integra or her Master.

"It's okay. They're both okay. Whatever happened before I passed out must have burned out parts of my brain. That's why even the humans feel wrong." Seras carried on a litany of reassurances as she picked her way back toward the street where she'd left Walter and Integra. She'd find Integra, and Integra would know what to do. Integra always knew what to do.  
_  
Chère._ The voice rubbed softly in her mind. _I need to tell you something I don't think you remember._

_I'm not ready for this._

_Do you think I was ready for this? You live our kind of life and you learn to take the things you're not ready for._ The warm feel of him wrapped around her belied the harshness of his next words, _Now suck it up and deal with this, we don't have time to pretend. _

"I don't want to know what you want to tell me –"

Pip cut her off with a drill sergeant's snap, _It doesn't matter what you want, we're at war! I've lost as much as anyone tonight and I'm still facing reality. Now listen to me, Integra is gone. There's no point in going back for her, she's dead and we both know it. _

Seras remembered the agony of Alucard's screams. Her mind shied away from the pain, but she knew Pip was right. She had caught part of the backlash when the bond between Integra and Alucard was broken. _You saved me again, didn't you?_

_I was attached to your body_ before_ it was my home. I didn't want anything happening to you.  
_  
Seras resumed walking, anyway. _I didn't think Alucard was capable of caring for Integra like that._ Her tears were flowing again at the memory of the grief he had broadcast. _I honestly didn't think he had much in the way of feelings left._

_I had time to think about that while you were unconscious. I think I understand, maybe a little. _

Seras clambered over a fallen wall, _How long was I out?_

_I don't know. I got you to open your eye for a moment, but it didn't do me any good because I couldn't move any of the rest of you. From the light, I'd guess at least an hour. Anyway, do you want to hear my idea about Alucard?_

_Sure, I don't understand him. I'll take any help I can get with him. Especially if Integra's really –_

_She is. It doesn't do us any good to pretend she's not._ He gave the mental impression of taking a deep breath. _I have noticed that I feel what you feel. I can kind of push it back to keep your feelings from overwhelming mine, but your emotions are always there for me. But, when we killed Jolene, your feelings were amplified by mine. Imagine what it would be like if you had hundreds or thousands of souls to pick up your feelings…_

Seras shivered at the thought of being caught in an emotional feedback loop with so many captured souls. _Then why doesn't he have that problem all the time?_

_Because he doesn't let the souls out? I don't know. I'm just a dead mercenary._

They continued in silence after that until Seras arrived at the street where they had last seen Walter and Integra. Seras didn't need to look, she followed the smell of Hellsing blood to where Integra's body lay casually tossed on the ground like a discarded doll.

Walter was nowhere to be seen. She called for him and looked around, but there was no sign of him. She wondered if whoever had killed Integra had killed him, too.

Seras knelt by the lost Hellsing master's side. When she rolled Integra onto her back, the cause of death became obvious. She carefully closed Integra's suit jacket over the gaping wound in her chest and picked her up. It was an awkward process with only one functional arm, but she managed to sling Integra over her shoulder. She thought that Integra's shell should be heavier. The woman had been made of steel; her body should have reflected that.

"I'll take you home, Sir." _And after I put you to rest with your ancestors, I will put every member of Millennium in England to rest, too. _

The sun forced Seras to walk with her burden rather than fly. The streets were so filled with debris that it was a lost cause to steal a car to drive back to the Hellsing Estate. Seras used the time walking on foot through the ruins of London to think. On a few occasions she had to put Integra down while she killed vampires in uv gear who thought she would be an easy target. Seras was beginning to understand her Master's disdain for these lesser vampires.

_Why haven't you tried to contact Alucard?_ Pip asked her when they reached the shattered walls of the estate.

_Because I think he needs his time to grieve. And I'm scared,_ she admitted._ I'm afraid he'll burn my brain out if I try to talk to him before he's ready. He'll find me when he wants me. _

Seras avoided going inside the mansion and instead threaded her way through the wreckage and around the back to the graveyard. The family mausoleum stood among the graves of those who had fallen in the service of the Crown and the Hellsing family.

With some effort she was able to open the mausoleum and lay Integra's body inside. She deserved better, but it would have to wait until other problems had been dealt with. "I hope that your soul is someplace safe now, Sir Integra. May God be with you. Amen."

_I never was very good at those sorts of things._

Pip spoke up before Seras turned to leave. _Hold on. My turn. Boss, you knew what you were doing. You didn't back down. You didn't quit. You had honor and guts. I respected you. I hope you don't find the afterlife too boring. Goodbye. _

Seras stood in the cemetery, staring blankly at the headstones that surrounded her. Now that they'd returned Integra to her home, she didn't know what to do next. There was just so much. Every time she tried to think of a plan, her mind would just go blank on her.

_What's wrong with me, Pip?_

_Shell shock would be my guess. We've been through a lot in the past day. Let me help you. War's been my job for a long time. _

With Pip's guidance, Seras entered the mansion to look for her Harkonnen, some medical blood and a change of clothes. Every room she passed through clamored at her with memories, most bloody, but a few so sweet that they reduced her to tears.

She gave up on the change of clothes when she realized she had no idea how to get her clothes on and off around the swirling shadow that still grew from her shoulder. It could wait. Instead, she headed downstairs to Walter's weapons shop to see what she could find.

The room wasn't empty. Walter was methodically emptying the contents of several locked drawers into a large case. He didn't turn when she stopped in the door to watch him, but addressed her while he worked, "Miss Victoria, you have returned. Did you find the Major's little friend?"

"No, something happened." Before she could continue, she felt her Master's touch in her mind.

_Police Girl?_

_Master! Where are you? Are you alright?_ She cringed, of course he wasn't alright. She focused outward on Walter as he asked her a question.

"What happened that made you lose your quarry?" He gave her the disapproving look that never failed to make her cringe.

_I'm in London. Integra is dead._ His mental touch was devoid of emotion. Seras couldn't tell if Alucard just didn't care now or if he'd shut down his feelings about Integra's death. _Are you under attack?_

_No, I'm fine. There's nobody dangerous here._ She blinked at Walter as he repeated himself. "What happened? Oh, you don't know yet." Of course he didn't know yet. Walter would never have left Integra's body on the ground like that if he'd been there when she died. She frowned, trying to decide how best to tell him. "Sir Integra was killed."

_Seras, you need to watch out for Walter._ Alucard warned.

_It's okay, Master, I found him. He's right here.  
_  
She didn't hear Walter's response of, "I know. I killed her," over Alucard's warning shout, but Pip's reflexes pushed her out of the doorway, into the hall as Walter threw his wires out to entangle her. They passed through her shadow arm, leaving an uncomfortable tingling.

Seras scrambled away from the door, but Walter was out of the room and walking down the hallway toward her before she could get away. Her shock at Walter's treachery left her almost paralyzed. It took another prod from Pip to get her to turn and try to escape.

She was brought up short by the papercut sting of wires wrapping around her body and neck and pulling just enough to draw tiny trickles of blood from the lines they cut. "Don't move, Seras, unless you want me to demonstrate what happened to Millennium's Major."

_I'm going to die! I've been through too much for Walter to be the one who kills me. Master, help me!_

"That's a good little vampire. Listen to Uncle Walter and everything will be fine," he mocked.

"Why did you kill Sir Integra, Walter? What's wrong with you?"

"It doesn't matter, Seras." He secured his wires to hold her in place before picking her up and carrying her back into the weapons shop. "I didn't expect to see you so soon. Who knew you'd give up on Schrödinger so quickly?" He leaned her in a corner like a package and went back to his packing. She could see several large books in the case in addition to the contents of the drawers he'd been packing. He finished quickly and added a small box covered in symbols that looked like Alucard's seals.

After snapping the case closed, Walter walked over to Seras. He licked a bit of blood off of her cheek and she shuddered and closed her eyes. This was not something she had ever expected from the man she had always thought of as a master of manners and decorum. "I still need to save you for later. Try not to get yourself killed, my dear." Walter pressed a hard kiss against her mouth and left.

She leaned in the corner like a discarded weapon until she felt Alucard's call. She called back to him and waited for him to join her. He walked through the wall and glowered at her. "Some child of mine you are. You have enough power to call on the shadows, but not enough control or will to use them properly."

"You know, Master, now might not be the best time to give me a hard time about something you never taught me." Seras felt pushed to the ends of her tolerance and catching hell from Alucard about not being able to turn to shadow the way he did was not helping.

To her surprise, he stopped and gave her words serious consideration. While she waited for his response, she stared at her Master. He looked nothing like the Hellsing vampire hunter she was used to; he looked like a feudal warlord in his armor with the tatters of his gloves dangling from armored gauntlets. His face lacked the jaded humor that she'd come to think of as part and parcel of the Alucard experience. Instead, his eyes were hooded and dark. She decided that Pip might have been right about the souls amplifying Alucard's grief, but that he'd had quite enough grief of his own without their help.

"You're right," he said at last.

"I am?"

"Yes. I can't fault you for not learning control of a power you didn't possess even a day ago. In fact, I should give you credit for having drunk human blood, grown a shadow limb and learned to fly. You have done well this past night."

"I did?"

"Are you trying to get me to revise my opinion again with your vapid responses?"

_Any chance you can tell him to shove it?_ Pip asked.

"I can hear you, mercenary."

_Ah, I'll remember that, then, Sir Alucard._

"Do that." He leaned forward until his hair brushed against Seras' face. "I'm going to show you how to do this once. Then it's your responsibility to practice until you are as skillful as I am. After you have mastered this, I will teach you a new ability."

She felt his mind reach into hers and pull. He pulled the shadows out of her until they overlaid her body, pushing the flesh deep within them until the flesh was gone and she stood before him, a shadow figure of herself. The wires dropped away to pool on the floor at her feet. "Remember how this feels," he told her before he reached in again and pushed the shadows back, forcing them to push her body out, this time whole.

He frowned at the eye that had not regenerated. "You allow your slave too much, Police Girl."

"He's not a slave, Master. Don't ever call him that. He gave his life up for me. He helped me more than anyone else ever has, including you. He will never be just a slave." She forgot to be angry when she realized that she had put both hands on her hips while she remonstrated him. She looked with pleasure at her regenerated arm.

A ghost of his old smile settled on his lips. "That's your choice, Police Girl."

"What do we do now, Master?"

"We go and finish our jobs: Search and Destroy."


	3. Peers

"How did it go?" Seras hurried to the door to take Alucard's cloak when he came in.

"That lovely young lady has only grown wiser with time." He smiled at Seras. "She saw the merit of my recommendation and has reinstated the Hellsing Organization."

"Who will lead the organization?" _Oh please don't let it be some prat!_

"I hope that you do not believe your Master to be a prat?" He grinned at her with most of his old deviltry.

"You? But you're not human!"

"You do seem to be attached to that observation, Police Girl. I will demonstrate for your education." Shadows swirled around him and parted to reveal a human man who bore a strong resemblance to Integra Hellsing down to the ice blue eyes. He swept a mocking bow to Seras. "Sir Vladimir Hellsing will lead the Hellsing Organization. Alucard will continue to be Hellsing's trump." The shadows returned him to the bearded form he had worn since London had been attacked. "If you would practice more and drink more blood, you would be able to construct a convincing human appearance just as I can. It takes strength and energy to maintain, but I have plenty of both."

Alucard strode off down the hall, through the construction areas toward the kitchen. Seras followed after him with her concerns. "But nobody has ever heard of Sir Vladimir, why would they even accept you as the leader, no matter how much you look like Sir Integra?"

"Sir Vladimir will be attending several social events in the next month. By the time he's done chatting up the peerage, half of them will swear they went to boarding school with him. Humans are so malleable. It won't take much effort." He pulled a bag of blood out of the refrigerator, nodding his thanks to Seras when she handed him a goblet. 

"After that, it will be simple enough to announce that he is taking over the family responsibilities. The attacks around the world last month have made clear the need for a dedicated vampire eradication organization. Most of those fools will be relieved to have anyone standing between them and afterlife as a ghoul."

"But, you? Why would Her Majesty trust you?" Seras was expecting Alucard to snap at her soon, but this just didn't make sense and she had to understand.

"I have agreed to swear a blood oath to the Crown. I answer to only the royal family. Whoever wears the crown, commands me." He looked at his bare hands. "It's not as onerous as the Hellsing family seals. All empires and all families eventually fall. It's not an eternal commitment."

Seras didn't give in, "I still don't understand why you want to tie yourself to anyone again. After so long, why aren't you out ruling the world or taking revenge on all your enemies?"

"Sometimes you're enough to make a vampire despair," Alucard tapped her on the end of her nose, making her bare her teeth at him before ducking her head away. "You haven't asked yourself what I get out of the arrangement."

_He's playing with you, girly._

"Yes, I'm playing with her, mercenary. However, now I am done playing and I am done answering my _child's_ questions. If you can't answer them with two minds to work on the problem, you are probably a lost cause after all."

Before Seras could protest, he summoned a portal and left the room.

_What do you think, Pip?_

I think he just told us that you could make your body look like "Sir Vladimir."

So? I don't want to pretend to be a Hellsing.

Pip snorted at her, _Maybe he's right about despairing. If you could make your body look like Vladimir Hellsing, could you make it look like Pip Bernadette? I wouldn't mind being in a familiar body now and then, you know._

•••

San Francisco wasn't so bad. The days were often pleasantly foggy, affording him the luxury of wandering among all the humans during the day. It was fascinating to watch them as they bustled about, secure in their personal illusions of immortality.

Warrant Officer Felix Schrödinger knew that immortality was an illusion for everyone. The people who were supposed to have been his companions in eternity were all gone. He was the last of the elite, the last Werewolf.

He was also on the run. The shadow of death had been following him for more than a month. He didn't understand how it was that he could move anywhere on the planet as whim took him and Walter Dornez would still be right behind him. The longest respite he'd gotten yet was only three days.

He shook off his worries about the renegade Angel of Death. If death found him, he might die, he might not. He was getting tired of running. He'd had sixty years hiding in the Brazilian jungle with only occasional forays into the world on missions for his commander; now Millennium was fragmented, his commander had been destroyed and he was on his own for the first time ever. Since the Angel might find him at any time, he was going to enjoy every moment he had.

"Time to go grab a bite," he chirped at his reflection. Gone was the Hitler Youth uniform, traded in for clothes appropriate to someone his apparent age. He'd thought about trying to hide his ears, but after an evening spent exploring both the Castro and Haight Ashbury districts, he decided he didn't need to worry about looking a bit odd.

The cute and harmless act worked beautifully no matter where he was, but in this city, it went over particularly well. Schrödinger ate as often as he wanted, which wasn't too frequently since ghouls were a pain in the neck. He could have just popped into the hospital and stolen a few bags of transfusion blood, but he was hooked on the real thing after so many years of bagged rations.

He left the tiny room he had rented for too much money from a shabby man who didn't care how young his tenant was as long as he paid in cash. He thought he'd hop a bus just to enjoy the people watching and the potentially homicidal driving of every bus driver in the city. He hadn't seen a fatality yet, but he'd seen more than one person bumped by a bus taking a too-tight turn. It was like a bizarre kind of wild animal hunt using a bus instead of a gun. People who didn't like public transit just didn't understand the sheer entertainment value of that mode of transportation.

His mind wandered while he stood at the bus stop. It had been a month; maybe he'd go back to London soon just to see if the girl was okay. She probably thought they were enemies, but he didn't. With no more Hellsing Organization and no more Millennium, they were just two vampires, not opponents in a long-term game of war. Schrödinger just wanted to see her, just for a minute. Maybe in ten years or twenty or a hundred, he'd be able to talk to her and they could see if they had more in common than an odd physical resemblance and a penchant for bloodsucking.

He was absorbed in his visions of getting to know Seras Victoria when his sensitive ears picked up a familiar footstep. _Damn! I liked San Francisco._ He didn't change his position or posture while he gave his situation a quick analysis. Too many eyes and not enough refuges, but he had to get out of there.

He waited for his stalker to move again. It was one of the harder things he had done in his long life, to wait, knowing his doom stood behind him. The sound of a sleeve brushing cloth, as an arm moved, was his cue. He dove to the ground and rolled under a car that was stopped at the light. The instant he could feel the anchors of other people's eyes removed from him, he teleported.

He stood and looked around. _Well, I wanted to go back to London, didn't I?_ The night was nearly over instead of just beginning. He started looking for an appropriate refuge to spend the day.

•••

Walter C. Dornez smiled at the device in his lap. He could just incinerate the pest, but that would take all of the fun out of this hunt. Of course, without this handy tracker he'd retrieved from the Hindenburg II before he sent it down in flames like its namesake, he would have had much more difficulty tracking a vampire who could vanish and appear anywhere in the world.

Millennium had inadvertently facilitated many things for him, including the first class travel in which he had been indulging for the past month. Never allow a skilled intelligence retrieval officer time alone with your computers. With most of Millennium dead, he'd had plenty of time to rape their network for everything he needed.

He smiled at the flight attendant as she walked by; she looked positively delicious. Her smile dimmed for a moment when she met his grey eyes, but came back on at full wattage when he poured charm at her. The colored contact lenses were bothersome, but necessary in a world where everyone knew without any doubts that vampires were more than just the stuff of late night horror marathons.

Returning to London was actually one of the smartest things Schrödinger could have done. Walter was constrained by Alucard's presence to keep his activities completely secret. He wanted to face the great No Life King, but not yet.

He leaned his head back and thought about the day that would come when he and Alucard would finally test themselves against each other. They had known each other for such a long time. As age had claimed Walter's speed and strength, he had accepted the fact that Alucard would mop the floor with him. Now, with his skills restored beyond those of his human peak, he would have his showdown with his old companion. He thought back to a time, sixty years before, when he had first met Alucard.

_"Who's the pouf?" he'd asked Arthur Hellsing._

"The pouf, as you put it, is the most dangerous weapon the Hellsing Organization has," Arthur answered coldly. "You'll do well to remember that."

Walter had responded with an exhalation of smoke that was just barely far enough away from Arthur's face to avoid being a matter for disciplinary action. "I thought I was the most dangerous weapon you'd have. Isn't that why you recruited me? You know, the complete package of inhuman speed, the ability to kill a dozen men at once and I never need to reload." He glanced meaningfully at the tommy guns the foppishly dressed man was packing onto the airplane.

Sir Hellsing had flushed at Walter's challenge, but instead of punishing him, he had called to the man in question, "Alucard, come meet your new assistant."

"Assistant? I'm not his bloody assistant!"

"Language, Mr Dornez. I have tolerated a lot from you because of your value, but you will learn some decorum if you are going to serve this organization and through it, Queen and country."

"They aren't my queen or my country. I'm here to kill Germans and vampires. I don't give a fuck about the rest."

He waited for Arthur to remonstrate him for his deliberately vulgar language, and was surprised when Arthur merely spoke mildly to the man he had called Alucard, "Alucard, demonstrate to this boy why you are the more dangerous of the two of you."

Sitting in his seat on an airplane thousands of miles and six decades away from his first meeting with Alucard, Walter smiled ruefully at the memory of the child he'd been. Alucard had effortlessly terrified him in that first encounter. It didn't take him long to learn that the great git was just as dangerous as Arthur had said he was, but Walter had always burned to know if he was dangerous enough to survive the wires.

What had Arthur Hellsing been thinking when he'd taken a talented boy off the streets and set him to murder and mayhem? He had used Walter just as casually and callously as he used Alucard, twisting him in no time at all into as much of a monster as the vampire.

Then, when the war was over, he'd had the nerve to try to re-humanize his Angel of Death. After years of a life made up entirely of blood and slaughter, how did Sir Hellsing think he could take that away?

But Walter was given no choice. He was educated, he was constricted, he was constrained, he was virtually brainwashed into being a perfect gentleman. He'd pushed it down. He'd sealed away his bloodlust almost as successfully as Alucard's freedom had been sealed away from him, burying it under the façade of an Englishman who would do anything for Queen and country when he was really just a bastard citizen of no country with a love for violence.

He'd done it so well, even he had believed it after a few decades. He had honestly believed that he belonged at Integra's side. He had sacrificed himself for her. In the end, he might have left her alive if she hadn't kept talking about how he was _Hellsing's_ and how he had to come back to _her._ How could she have had the nerve to be grateful for his freedom when her own arguments made it clear that he would never be free? Her own words condemned him as just a tool of the Hellsing Organization and family. He admitted to himself that he hadn't been thinking entirely rationally when he'd taken her heart, but he would make the best of that, and in the end, it would be the proper decision.

Walter leaned his head against the seat and thought about his plans to replay that first meeting with Alucard with a different ending. Next time they met, it would be on Walter's terms.

•••

Schrödinger made his way back to the abandoned building he'd taken as his home. So many people had died in the attack on London, there was no dearth of lodging.

He'd seen Seras. She had found a way to regrow her arm and he was happy for her. The wing had been interesting, but she looked much better with two normal limbs. She hadn't regenerated one of the eyes that Jolene had taken from her, but she still looked like she was doing well.

He hadn't known from their brief meetings before that she had a tendency to talk to herself. He'd watched from a distance, fascinated, as she walked the damaged grounds at night carrying on long, one-sided conversations with herself. Sometimes she laughed as though someone had told her a joke or scowled and scolded.

He was so caught up in his musings about a vampire girl he knew he would probably never have that he almost didn't hear the whisper of razorwire whipping through the air. Only instinct kept him from being shredded, and he was rolling back up off the ground almost before he knew why he had hit the dirt in the first place. A quick glance told him more than he wanted to know when he saw the shimmer of the wires and the dark figure of the man the Major had thought to use.

He looked for a refuge. If he could just get the man's eyes off of him for a moment, Schrödinger could be anywhere else he wanted to be, but he couldn't do it if he was observed. He tried to duck away, but he had allowed Walter to get too close this time. The thin sting around his neck pulled him up short and he waited for Walter to finish the job. The wire barely even hurt, but the pain wasn't the worry. The worry was how easily the wire was going to separate his head from his body.

He jumped when Walter spoke right next to his ear. Schrödinger hadn't heard him moving that time. "You led me a long chase, little kitty." 


	4. And in Your Left Hand?

"We pray that our Sister may find in death, the peace she could not have in life. May God and his Son watch over her soul. Amen."

Enrico Maxwell turned away from the grave and walked back toward his waiting limousine. It weighed on him that one of his few remaining people had been killed so brutally after surviving the horrors of London. He winced behind his dark glasses when he saw Father Renaldo waiting for him at the car with a notebook computer and a number of file folders clutched in his hands.

Renaldo held the door open for him and climbed in behind his leader. "Father Maxwell, I have some of the information you requested regarding Sister Heinkel's death and Sister Takagi's disappearance."

Maxwell scowled at the reminder of his demotion. _Father Maxwell._ Every time he heard those words, they were a slap in his face – he had been an archbishop! Now he was nothing – titular head of Iscariot because he knew too much about those in power for them to oust him, no matter how desperately they might wish to – but gone were his dreams of ascendancy. His tenure in the Church would probably end with a bullet to the brain some day soon.

"Show me what you have, Renaldo."

He watched as the man opened the computer and called up a video window. "We have the surveillance records from the car park where Sister Heinkel was murdered." He pointed to two women in the screen. "Here you see Sisters Heinkel and Takagi." They walked across the row of cars before both turned in response to something out of the camera's view. Heinkel drew her gun. Her mouth moved and she was obviously giving Takagi orders because the smaller woman faded back behind her, reaching for her katana and her glasses. Heinkel raised her gun and fired at whatever it was offscreen and Takagi removed her glasses, exchanging her mild Yumiko personality for the berserker, Yumie.

A blur passed through the camera's view and Heinkel fell. Maxwell blinked and had Renaldo back the replay up. Again, a silver blur, and Sister Heinkel's body fell forward while her head rolled away to her right. Maxwell shook his head in mixed horror and anger that a woman who had faithfully served Iscariot and the Church could be struck down so easily. He motioned to Renaldo to continue the playback for him. Yumie drew her katana and rushed toward the edge of the screen, to be met by a man dressed in black. The two fought briefly, but the man moved inhumanly fast and disarmed and disabled the woman all too quickly.

He picked up the fallen nun and carried her directly to the surveillance camera. The man appeared to be in his early to mid-thirties. He looked straight into the camera lens and spoke one word, carefully enunciating, "Maxwell." He smiled broadly enough to show the upper and lower fangs of a vampire before turning to retrieve Yumiko's glasses and exiting the frame.

Maxwell ran his tongue around his suddenly dry mouth. The vampire had directed this attack for Maxwell's eyes in particular, sending him an unmistakable message of threat.

"Do we know who he is, Renaldo? He seems oddly familiar, but I don't remember any vampires matching his description." He looked again at the frozen frame of the man – black hair pulled back in a ponytail; a long, sharp nose; thin lips and a sharp jaw. The monocle was a peculiar affectation for a vampire and struck a chord he could not place.

Renaldo cleared his throat. "Oddly, he matches a profile we have had for the last sixty years, although it is puzzling…"

"Spit it out, I don't have time to play guessing games. That vampire is clearly threatening me."

Renaldo opened one of the folders he had brought and handed Maxwell a profile photograph of the same man. "You do know who he is!" Maxwell accused.

Renaldo shook his head, "But it doesn't make sense, sir." He handed Maxwell another photograph and the man understood why his assistant had been reticent and probably confused. He recognized the man in this photograph as Walter C. Dornez, a Hellsing family retainer and their semi-retired "Angel of Death." He flipped the two photos over and looked at the date notations on them. The younger man's photograph had been taken in 1964, whereas the other was a more recent intelligence photo taken last year, before the war began. Looking at it more closely, Maxwell recognized the familiar background of the Imperial War Museum.

•••

Yumiko turned her tear-stained face to follow her captor's movements. "What are you going to do?" She had woken to find herself shackled against a St. Andrew's cross. There was no way to bring her limbs together and she had never learned something as esoteric as lock picking anyway. She had struggled until her wrists and ankles bled, only stopping when the strange vampire came and licked the wounds clean. She would rather not attract his attention in that manner again.

He looked at her now and she shivered. "I'm going to kill you, of course." He smiled and came over to examine her face. "You've been crying. Why? You're one of God's assassins. Aren't you sure of your place in the afterlife?"

Yumiko turned her face away from the vampire and shuddered with her sobs. She stiffened when he turned her face back toward him. "I asked you a question." He waited for her response; when it was not forthcoming, he asked, "Maybe your alter-ego would be more conversational?" She felt his hands on her face, removing her glasses and then Yumiko went to sleep.

Yumie woke and spat in his face and pulled at her shackles, reopening her cuts, "Get away from me, you creature of hell!"

"Tell me, why was Yumiko crying, do you think?" His pleasant demeanor didn't change when she spat on him; he just wiped the spittle from his face and watched her. He didn't stop smiling when she released a stream of invective ill befitting a nun. The man waited until she stopped to draw breath and reached out, grabbing her by her throat and pushing her back against the crosspiece behind her.

Yumie gaped like a fish out of water as her throat was constricted by the vampire's grip. Black spots swam in front of her eyes and she was just giving thanks to God that Yumiko was asleep for their death when he released her, gagging and coughing, to breathe again. "It's not that important, I suppose."

"Just…kill…me," Yumie gasped out.

"I shall. Thank you for being so obliging. However, it's not time yet."

Yumie watched him walk away, closing the door to the room where she was imprisoned. Her screams of rage echoed off the walls, but no one came.

•••

"Well you tell Sir Vladimir Hellsing that yesterday, his servant murdered one of my people and kidnapped another and he can't pretend otherwise. He _will _ speak to me." Maxwell was apoplectic that the latest Sir Hellsing refused to take his phone calls. He growled when another voice came on the line – a woman's voice. He didn't want to talk to some woman, he wanted the damned Hellsing leader, but he paused when the woman introduced herself.

"Father Maxwell, this is Seras Victoria," the other Hellsing vampire and head of Hellsing's small army of mercenaries. She was essentially the second ranked member of the Organization. The other vampire, Alucard, held a special place in Hellsing that did not require any sort of rank. He was a power unto himself, outside the rank system. "Sir Vladimir is unavailable now but wanted me to convey to you that he is very interested in this situation with your people and your evidence against Walter Dornez. He has authorized me to inform you that, in his words, 'Walter Dornez was lost to the Hellsing Organization more than a year ago, on the day of the invasion of London. Anything he may be doing now is not at our authorization, nor are we responsible for his supposed undead condition.'"

Maxwell sputtered into the phone, but the damned bitch hung up on him after making her brief statement. He didn't know whether to believe her or not. It would be terribly convenient for them to kill off Iscariot members and pretend that it was a rogue member rather than one in good standing, acting at their direction.

He swore as he slammed the phone back on its cradle, before returning to another replay of Heinkel's murder and Takagi's kidnapping. What was going on? Would Hellsing have sent him to send such a blatant message and then deny it? Had they truly lost control of the man records called the "Angel of Death?" Maxwell had seen the records of what he had been able to do as a man. What havoc would he wreak as a vampire?

He sat, obsessively watching the recording of Wolfe Heinkel's death. It was just so personal that she had died as part of a message to _him;_ he couldn't tear himself away from it. There were a thousand things he could be doing, but instead, he clicked the button that would replay the images again. And again.

Father Renaldo knocked on the door, entering at Renaldo's curt response. "Father Maxwell, we will need to leave soon."

Maxwell shook his head. "I'm not going."

"Father Maxwell, you have to go. Think about your position. The other twelve sections will use it as an excuse to oust you if you don't attend the meeting."

"Don't you see? This is the reason for the timing of this threat." Maxwell seized on an idea that made his eyes light with a paranoid fervor. "This is _their _doing. They're using this vampire to dispose of me. They've found their way to make me disappear. Damn every one of those Satan-loving heretics to hell!"

"Father Maxwell, even if that's true, you must attend or know that you are forfeiting your leadership. We have struggled for so long to keep you in a position of serving God and Iscariot, please don't throw it away now." Maxwell had to listen to Renaldo; the man had been his most trusted adviser for Maxwell's tenure in Iscariot. Had Renaldo been an ambitious man, he would have made a fine leader; however, he had always been content to provide support and advice rather than wield the power himself. He was indispensable to Iscariot and to Maxwell as Iscariot's leader.

"I have arranged for an armored limousine and a full escort, Father, but we must leave now or we will be late. You can't afford to send any negative messages now." Renaldo was insistent.

"You're right, Father Renaldo. As always, your advice is sound. I can't ignore my duty to Iscariot, regardless of the threat." He handed his briefcase to Renaldo. "Thank you for arranging an appropriate escort."

The rode in silence toward the meeting site; Maxwell used the time to organize his scattered thoughts. The recent crimes against his people had distracted him from preparing for this important meeting of the heads of all thirteen Vatican sections. Maxwell would be lucky to survive his own fellows; the vampire was hardly as dangerous in his mind now that he was focused on the internecine battle ahead.

A pair of explosions shocked both men and they looked out the windows of the limousine to see that their escort vehicles had both gone up in flames. Maxwell forgot entirely about the cutthroat section heads in favor of a more immediate fear. The limousine swerved erratically, throwing Maxwell against the interior, before stopping at the wreckage of the truck in front of them. Neither man had time to react before the door was wrenched open and a black-clad arm reached in and pulled Maxwell out of the car like a rag doll.

Renaldo climbed out and just ducked a falling loop of wire before it dropped around him. Maxwell was fighting against the grip of the man from the surveillance video. This then, was Walter Dornez – the Angel of Death. He'd lived up to the moniker so far, destroying a full escort in moments. Renaldo summoned the holy writ, which was his Order's most sacred weapon, sending flying sheets to sweep Maxwell out of the vampire's hands and deposit the priest behind his bodyguard.

Walter sent his wires to wrap the interfering priest, but Renaldo's writ flew up and swept the wires aside before they met their target. Walter quirked his lips and inclined his head in a gesture of respect to the priest. Renaldo had accomplished what no other human ever had in deflecting his deadly threads.

Father Renaldo saw the gesture, but did not acknowledge it, instead he reached into his coat and pulled out a sudden barrage of throwing knives. They were small, not more than four inches in length, but dozens seemed to spring from the man's hands and hurtle toward the place the vampire had been standing. Renaldo registered a blur of black before Walter had closed with him and struck him in the stomach with a fist. The priest was pulled over double around the pain in his stomach and before he could straighten, he felt the wires wrap around his neck before he felt nothing more.

The Iscariot section chief fired round after round at his would-be assassin, but he seemed to always be just a moment too slow to keep up with his attacker's movements. He cried out when Walter snatched his weapons from his hands, breaking several of his fingers in the process. It came almost as a relief when Walter struck Maxwell in the head and the world grayed out. Another blow to the head and the priest knew only darkness.

•••

"Father Maxwell? Father Maxwell?"

Enrico wanted nothing more than to ignore whoever was trying to wake him, but the burning acrid odor of an ampoule of smelling salts waved under his nose made him cough and gag until he opened his eyes.

"There you are, Father Maxwell. How kind of you to join us." The smiling face of the man from the surveillance cameras hove into view.

The priest choked out the name, "Dornez," while he tried to clear his vision.

"That's right. Section XIII scores two points for correctly identifying their destroyer."

Maxwell bared his teeth at the man's flippancy. "We will see you burn in the deepest pits of hell, you disgusting vermin! You cannot interfere with God's chosen."

"God's chosen?" Walter chuckled derisively. "God's choices have been wholly inadequate if you're his chosen. Look at your people – dead, doomed or damned. With their leader foremost among them."

Maxwell had only noticed the vampire when he woke, but as Walter walked across the room, he saw that they were not alone. Yumiko hung limply, chained to an X-shaped contraption – a St. Andrew's cross – just as Maxwell was restrained. Her face was tearstained behind her glasses.

Walter lifted her chin, but looked at her leader. "What shall it be for our tidbit, Iscariot? Death? Doom? Or damnation?"

The vampire laughed at Maxwell's incoherent rage. The man's pale face was flushed with his anger. Walter leaned in when Yumiko made a low request. He looked over at Maxwell, "She wants me to let Yumie out." He shook his head at the small woman, "Now why would I give you a tool to make this any easier? Foolish nun."

"Let her go, vampire!"

"Is that your request? Are you certain?" Walter cocked his head and regarded the priest.

"Let Yumiko go free, Walter Dornez. At least half of the girl is an innocent."

Yumiko pulled her chin away from Walter's grasp as the vampire laughed. "She's not nearly as innocent now as she was when she got here, priest, but if you want her to go, I can oblige. But first…" Without warning, Walter pulled on Yumiko's hair to jerk her head up and expose her neck. Maxwell watched her fists clench and then release and listened to the sounds of her whimpers as they became softer, eventually drowned out by the sounds of the vampire's feeding.

"I can let her go now, Father Maxwell," Walter commented as he first patted his lips with a handkerchief and then opened the locks on her shackles, allowing her body to drop to the floor.

The vampire stalked across the floor to his other captive. "Is she damned, doomed, or dead now, priest?" He asked as he leaned against the wall and watched Enrico as he hung in his chains, too shocked to reply. The silence stretched until it was broken by the sound of Yumiko's body pulling itself up to stand, awaiting orders from its master.

"You defiled her?"

"There is just no pleasing you Iscariots, is there?" Walter asked insouciantly. "If I hadn't 'defiled' her, as you say, she would have risen as a vampire and you would have been railing about how I had damned her. You probably would have told her to destroy herself. At least now you can pretend that her soul can be salvaged. You should be thanking me."

He pushed up off the wall and stood directly in front of Maxwell, their bodies a hairsbreadth apart, "And now, you'll need to decide which choice you want. Do you wish to be certainly damned or merely doomed?" The priest's brows knit.

Walter leaned in and breathed seductively in the other man's ear, "Tell me, Enrico, have you ever been buggered?"

•••

Alexander Anderson stood in front of Archbishop Santucci and listened to the report of Enrico Maxwell's kidnapping and Father Renaldo's death. Two fine Iscariot agents were dead and another was missing along with the head of the organization. He wordlessly accepted the data CD with the records of the events that had led up this, Anderson's appointment as interim head of Iscariot. It went without saying that he was not going to be the permanent holder of the position, but Section XIII lacked experienced members after the ill-fated attack on London and Anderson was the highest ranking living member.

The priest managed to hold his temper for the ride back to Section XIII's headquarters. He pushed past the man who attempted to open his car door for him and swept through the halls to his own spartan quarters. The few people who encountered him on his way hurried away from the sight of his flushed red face and impotently grasping empty hands.

Once inside the sanctuary of his room, he stood staring emptily at the books strewn on every available surface before falling to his knees and losing himself in prayer. "Father, I have tried to be Your faithful servant. I have sinned to do Your will. I have willingly damned myself to protect Your innocents. I expect no mercy from You. I do not deserve it, but I beg of You to find mercy for Your servants, Sister Heinkel and Father Renaldo and watch over Sister Takagi and Father Maxwell. They served You with their hearts and souls and I pray that You will take their honest service into account.

Father, there's a trial coming. I don't know what Your will is in this, but I will do my best to serve You in the ways You have given me. Please guide my hand to do what is right. I exist only to serve You. Amen."

•••

_The Angel of Death did not pass over Section XIII. He gave no care to whether his victim was a firstborn son as he silently slipped from room to room in the dormitories that housed the remaining members of Iscariot. In each room he left behind the body of another warrior of God._

_The last room he visited was Anderson's. The priest and the bringer of death faced each other in the small chamber. No matter how many blades the paladin threw, he could not touch the monster that had felled all of Iscariot save him. His writ would not touch the creature and he was quickly beaten into a corner and disarmed; held helpless as a babe as it pressed its face against his before running its nose across his cheek and burying sharp teeth in his throat.  
_

Alexander Anderson snapped out of his nightmare, hand instinctively testing his throat to make sure it was whole. It was dawn. Instead of trying to return to sleep, he rolled out of bed and walked to the section chief's office – his office.

The few people awake at that hour were as disconcerted by the rumpled man in his pajamas as they had been when he'd stormed in the day before. He tried to remind himself to have either a computer put in his room or a cot put in the office – whatever it took to avoid this sort of early morning stroll.

Anderson had intended to go over the data on the CD from the archbishop again. He hadn't had to search for information on Walter Dornez – it was all already in Maxwell's computer. He remembered encountering the butler when he had been human, and old. It was difficult to ascribe the loss of four good agents to the man, no matter what the records said about his performance as Hellsing's trash man. However, when he reached the office, there was an envelope sitting on the keyboard of his computer.

He picked it up, examining the neatly handwritten "Alexander Anderson" on the front. The priest's hackles rose, his nightmare returning to haunt him. He had to forcibly remind himself that he had seen people walking the halls on his way to the office. The Angel of Death had not come to kill Section XIII's people – at least, not yet. Turning it over, it was not sealed; the flap was simply tucked inside. His pulse sped as he slipped out the two Polaroid pictures and the piece of stationery. He closed his eyes and said a quick prayer before flipping the photos over and looking at the frightened face of Enrico Maxwell and the empty gaze of the ghoul that had been Yumiko Takagi.

The enraged shouts of the paladin echoed through the early morning echo chamber of Section XIII's empty hallways. Anyone foolish enough to enter at that moment would have seen a pajama clad man wielding a large silver blade as he shouted challenges to an absent foe. Eventually that very image penetrated his fury and he made the blade disappear.

Anderson paced the room restlessly, alternately muttering prayers and curses under his breath, before finally returning to the pictures and piece of paper he had dropped on the floor. He had to force himself not to crumple the pictures in his fist; placing them instead on the desk with a gingerness befitting a bomb. With that done, he opened the note and read over it:

Paladin Anderson,

You have something I want.  
I have something you want.  
Come take what I have, or I will come to you to take what you have.  
I am a romantic at heart. Your appointment is for 9:00 pm tonight at the Colosseum. Feel free to bring as many of your friends as you'd like. A buffet is always a treat.

Yours,  
Walter C. Dornez

•••

"Father Anderson, I'm disappointed you didn't bring me a snack."

Anderson spun slowly around, trying to locate the source of the voice. The acoustics of the Colosseum were deceptive, though. "From what I saw, it looks as though ye snacked on the guards, already. Ye didn't need to do that."

"Ah, but they have no comparison to the flavor of a chaste Iscariot murderer. Truly nothing I've sampled to date can compare." Still the voice remained untraceable, shifting, as though the speaker was moving, but echoing from many places around the structure.

"I'll not risk more of my people to ye, beast. I will destroy ye myself to cleanse this world of your taint and avenge the people you have killed."

"A commendable goal. As a reward for your ability to follow instructions, you may have your Father Maxwell and Sister Takagi back."

Two figures began to shuffle out the darkness of one of the many arches that circled the arena floor. From the pictures he'd seen and the ruthlessless the vampire had already exhibited, Anderson already knew what he would see when they got closer. Even knowing what he would see did not diminish the priest's rage when he could distinguish Yumiko Takagi's and Enrico Maxwell's distorted features. Rational thought fled before the red rage that swept through the priest and Walter Dornez smiled from his concealment as the Iscariot cut down his former compatriots.

"Fight me, ye cowardly abomination! Show yerself!" Walter watched the paladin vainly stalk the Colosseum searching for him until he became bored with the man's complete lack of imagination in his threats and curses.

"Tsk, Father Anderson. How would your orphans feel to hear you speak so?" Walter stepped into view, smiling genially. His wires cut a swarm of blades from the air, but even his speed and skill were insufficient to deflect the entirety of the priest's attack and he was pushed back with a grunt when a bayonet found its mark.

The vampire was forced to leave the blade in place when Anderson charged him, swords at the ready and a maniacal grin on his face. The two men were a blur of motion through the arches of the ancient structure – Anderson, the pursuer and Walter, the pursued. Blessed silver struck off of stone and wires tore away chips from the columns.

The two men paused when one of Walter's wire sweeps struck flesh, slashed across Anderson's right eye. The priest stopped to regain his full depth perception and Walter took the opportunity to finally pluck the searing silver from his ribs. There was a lull in the activity while flesh knit and wounds healed; then without a word or motion of agreement, the pursuit began again.

The priest tried another assault of thrown blades and they were swept away again. His restraining spell met with similar failure when his opponent's filaments tore the flying pages from the air before they could wrap around his limbs as they were meant to.

Suddenly the man Alexander Anderson had been chasing faded into the shadows and the priest could not find him. He walked cautiously through the arches, expecting an attack which did not come. "Where are ye? Did ye give up yer spine along with yer soul, creature?"

Something warned him before the vampire spoke directly behind him, "I'm right here, Father Anderson." The priest whirled and shoved a sword into Walter's stomach before the first word was completely out of his enemy's mouth. He'd been aiming for the heart, but the man in black was faster than any enemy Anderson had ever faced. He was ready to follow up with the sword in his other hand when the vampire jerked himself off of the sword and wrapped him in a cocoon of wires that severed his left arm at the elbow and pinned his right against his body.

A simple amputation would not have been enough to stop the enraged regenerator, but the degree to which the biting wires bound him left him with no options, and a simple pull of the wires toppled him to the ground. He snarled and pulled against the wires, succeeding in causing blood to spill in freshets all over his body. The wounded vampire stood over him and pushed him onto his back with a foot.

"You are the enemy Alucard enjoyed so much?" Walter nudged the priest again with a toe. "I can't say I'm overly impressed." He knelt next to the prone man and dipped a finger in his captive's blood, bringing the fluid to his lips. He smiled appreciatively and nodded, "Delicious, but not virginal. Our priest has a past? Ah, well, I suppose I can glean that story from your soul." He leaned over, his face inches from Anderson's, "It will only hurt for a moment." He laughed and pulled back when his captive tried to head butt him.

The priest struggled against his restraints violently enough to bring the wires down to bone and cause actual sprays of blood from severed arteries. He could feel himself weakening before Walter had an opportunity to get his face near his neck again, but he knew that it was too late, he was doomed. It was almost as though the vampire had heard his despairing thought when he asked, "Doomed, damned, or dead? Which will you be, Iscariot?"

_Doomed, damned or dead._ The words struck a chord with the priest and he seized on one last idea. "I'm already damned, beast, do yer worst." Alexander Anderson met his killer with open eyes and did not flinch when he felt the cold breath and colder fangs at his throat. His last thought as he gave himself over to the darkness was, _This is not a surrender. _


	5. Unlikely Alliances

_I told ye this wasn't a surrender._

Walter Dornez pulled his face away from the paladin's body and turned his head from side to side – a hound scenting for danger.

_Don't ye know anything? Ye should know this, Walter. _

The black-clad man was preternaturally still. An outside observer would have had no clue as to the inner dialogue he was conducting.

_Anderson? You should not be out and about like this. _

_Ye mean I should be another damned soul ye use to feed yerself and fuel yer unholy crusade?_

Walter felt a pressure inside himself and tried to push back. _What are you doing? Get out! _He fought to relegate Anderson's soul to the emptiness inside himself that he thought of as the "oubliette." It was where he imprisoned all of his other victims. Anderson belonged there with Takagi and Maxwell.

Anderson was not so easily moved. _I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to make myself at home. It's pretty empty in here, just what I'd expect from a demon. What happened to yer feelings and loyalties? _

Walter could feel Anderson nosing around inside his head, violating him more thoroughly than he had violated the nun or the priest who had been his guests.

_They were yer captives, not yer guests. _

_God damn you Anderson, get out of my mind!_ Walter snarled and pushed at the presence again. His temper was flaring and he felt fear for the first time since Millennium had finished their work with him.

_Ye'll not blaspheme in my home. _

_Your home? This is my mind! You do not belong here! _

_I belong here. This is my home and I'll be here for the rest of yer existence, vampire. Ye worked for Hellsing for the better part of sixty years – ye know this lesson at least as well as I do. Blood is coin of the soul and willing blood…_

_Willing blood? I took your blood after defeating you. You were not willing!_

_And that's where ye're wrong. I'll do anything,_ anything _to protect God's children from an abomination such as yerself. I gave my blood to ye in those final moments. I chose this. Ye asked me yerself, "Damned, doomed or dead?" I was damned long before ye started yer games; it was an easy choice to go with ye to keep fighting. _

The silence drew out as Walter contemplated Anderson's words. It was true, a willing soul would have significantly greater power and influence than a stolen one. _I'll let you go. You can go on to your afterlife_.

Bodiless and breathless, Anderson snorted his contempt, _A nice try, but no. Don't ye know that I am damned as many times over as ye are? I'm in no hurry to get on to Hell when I can stay and fight. First I'll finish my fight with ye, and then we'll take the battle to the rest of the beasts that walk God's earth. _

•••

Why wasn't he moving? The watcher moved restlessly, worried that the vampire had become aware of his presence and was preparing to attack. He had watched Walter come and kill the guards around the Colosseum. He had seen the priest destroy the ghouls that the guards had become as well as the ghouls that Walter had brought with him.

He slipped through the shadows, moving as silently as he could, drawn in by a curiosity he could not control. He had to see what the vampire was doing.

When he was less than five meters away, he froze at a sudden movement from the figure he was stalking. Schrödinger was shocked when the kneeling butler produced a shining blade out of nowhere and cut the head off of the corpse of the man he had just killed.

The childlike vampire ducked behind a column and watched the vampire who had killed all of his Millennium compatriots, and now all of Iscariot's upper ranks, as he began to carry on what appeared to be an argument with himself.

"I say we kill Alucard now."

"We can't kill Alucard now, you fool. You know what he can do."

"Ye plan to kill him. How did ye plan to do it?"

"Through blood, of course. What else compels a vampire?"

"What game are ye playin'?"

"No game. It's right there in my head for you to see. I have the heart of his master; with the blood of his child, I have the components for the ritual needed to make him vulnerable."

"The vampire lass? Ye'll kill her to get to Alucard?"

"Why not? I've killed everyone else, haven't I? Even you."

Schrödinger had heard enough. The faintest breath of air filling the space he had just vacated marked his departure. He had to warn Seras. She didn't have the advantage against Walter that he did. Schrödinger was fairly confident that he was the only true immortal on the planet, but he wasn't willing to test that against Walter Dornez's frightful ingenuity if the butler found out that he'd failed to kill the catboy the first time around.

•••

Seras and Pip had had time to come to terms with their relatively unique living situation. They had their moments where they both wished for some space, some peace, some blessed privacy, but overall, they had learned to live together fairly harmoniously. It was a comfort in a life that was filled with bloodshed to have each other as constant companions.

However, this was one of those days when Seras would have paid Alucard in whatever currency he would accept if he could just get Pip out of her mind for a day. They hadn't been able to agree on anything from which political system was superior to which blood type was most appealing and Seras was ready to have a night's peace.

They were outside in the garden arguing about whether they should take her accrued vacation time and go on a Caribbean cruise (his vote, and Seras had not been happy to catch his thought about women in bikinis) or taking an Antarctic trek later that year (Seras was particularly pleased by the almost complete lack of daylight involved in the trip; it sounded practically idyllic for a vampire.)

Schrödinger stood silently behind a hedge and watched her arguing with herself. It was eerily reminiscent of the dialogue he'd just witnessed Walter having with himself. He gave strong consideration to the resemblance and frowned. The silver blade that Walter had brandished was the most disturbing part of the prior scene; the way Seras' accent shifted from English to French was the most disturbing part of this one.

"But chère, there are all female cruises. You wouldn't have to worry about men harassing you."

"You mean _you_ wouldn't have to worry about men harassing me. Pip, I was _there_ when you were reading about those all female cruises. They're all female because they're cruises for lesbians. I am not interested in women that way."

_Pip?_ Schrödinger's mobile ears perked up and he leaned forward to try to satisfy his curiosity. Hadn't there been a Pip Bernadette with Hellsing? He tried to remember the dossiers he'd read on Hellsing's key personnel. Yes, a mercenary. He hadn't heard anything about this Bernadette since the war, though. So _that_ was the other soul Zorin and he had seen when she tried her illusions on the girl that fatal last time.

"You don't have to be interested in women that way, I'll be interested enough for both of us."

Seras snorted in disgust, "Why do you always have to be so perverse?"

"Why do you have to be so prudish?"

She turned away from her argument at the sound of a cat choking on a hairball but saw no cat, just a nervous looking catboy who cleared his throat again and held up his empty hands. "I'm not here as an enemy." He gasped and went limp when she ran across the space between them and caught him by the throat.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now or feed you to Alucard? He would probably think you were delicious." Her accent shifted and she glared at him in a manner that was completely unlike the expression that had just been on her face, "Or maybe we should kill and eat you. It's the only way you're ever getting inside this pretty body."

"I helped you in London, even if you don't know it. The day that everyone I knew died, I still helped you." Schrödinger's voice was a strangled rasp. "Butler's coming for you next, and I wanted to warn you."

Seras froze and her grip slackened, "What?" _Butler_ could only mean one person. She flashed back on the last time she'd seen Walter C. Dornez and his parting words, _I still need to save you for later. Try not to get yourself killed, my dear._ She pressed her fingers to her lips where he'd kissed her.

She released Schrödinger's throat and grabbed his arm instead, twisting it harshly up behind his back. "Tell me everything you know about Walter and what you mean when you say he's coming for me next."

Schrödinger winced, but it was better than having her ready to rip his throat out. "He's killed everyone important in Iscariot. He killed Alexander Anderson less than an hour ago and I heard him say that you were one of the keys to killing Alucard. He's going to use you to destroy your master and don't think he's going to leave you alive afterward."

•••

Seras unceremoniously dropped Schrödinger in a chair in front of Sir Vladimir's desk. "You need to hear what he has to say, Sir Vladimir."

Vladimir looked at the catboy before looking questioningly at Seras. "Why have you brought me a piece of garbage instead of disposing of it yourself?"

Schrödinger winced but stayed where he was. He'd paid attention to goings on at Hellsing as best he could, which wasn't overly well, but well enough to know who Sir Vladimir was. What he didn't understand was why people had ever taken him for human. He clearly was anything but.

Humans were so gullible.

That wasn't news to him. He was seventy years old and one of Doc's first successes. A qualified success, perhaps, but he was the first and his particular abilities had never been replicated. He'd had plenty of time to watch gullible humans suckered in by Millennium's promises of immortality

Schrödinger tried to look casual. There was no point in getting upset; he'd put himself here, hadn't he? "She brought me because I had information that was important to her and to Hellsing."

"Oh really, little one? Why don't you just go ahead and tell me, then, before I have Alucard come and eat you alive. You might have taken a bullet to the head from him, but you won't escape servitude to him if he takes you." Vladimir leaned back in his chair and smiled genially at Schrödinger.

Schrödinger knew evil and he knew threats. Despite Vladimir's very effective threat, the former Millennium member was not intimidated. "You don't have to try to scare me. I came here to tell you what was happening and I'm going to do it. Threatening me doesn't help you, it just makes me more likely to disappear when you aren't looking."

He kicked back in the chair and deliberately put his feet up on Vladimir's desk. He quickly and concisely related the story of Alexander Anderson's death and Walter's subsequent monologue. He looked at Seras when he finished and said, "He reminded me of you when he was doing that." He grinned at her when she scowled at him.

•••

_Ye just get on a plane and travel? Don't people ask questions?_

_No, you dolt, they don't. If you spread around enough money and present a passport that looks about right, you can travel almost anywhere. _

_But people know vampires are real. How do ye get past that?_

Walter smiled and handed his plane ticket to the ticketing agent and checked his bags. She was blissfully unaware of the fact that the handsome, well-dressed man who was smiling at her so cordially was a vampire who was carrying on a not overly friendly conversation with a disembodied priest who now lived in his head.

_Alexander, I am beginning to think that you are truly irredeemably dense. With a pair of colored contact lenses and enough self-discipline to learn how to speak without flashing fangs, it's quite simple to move around in the human world. Especially since they still take their perceptions of vampires from Millennium's shock troops – those weaker specimens who couldn't even tolerate sunlight. All it takes is a moment in daylight, unpleasant though it is, to set almost anyone's mind at rest. _

He walked quickly through the airport, easily passing through the security system after dropping his rings in the little basket for personal items and walking through the metal detector. The rings were a bit incongruous with his Brooks Brothers suit, but elicited nothing more than mild curiosity in the bored security agents. They were looking for guns and knives, not some man's jewelry and he put them back on with an internal smirk to his passenger.

_See. I just took a weapon through security. After Millennium and the little trick those Muslim fanatics played in the United States, everyone says that airport security is tighter than ever. They were entirely oblivious, only looking for and seeing what they expected – with my weapons and with me. That's always the way with humans. _

_Why is it so easy for ye to put yer human past aside? _

_No doubt Millennium's long gone and not lamented Doctor would have an explanation that is more technical than mine. For me, though, the answer is simple. I'm not human. I'm not going to waste my time in useless angst. I'm not going to weaken myself by pretending to be something I'm not. _

Walter sat in the first class lounge and opened a newspaper, which he cursorily scanned, but barely paid attention to.

_What about – _

_Alexander, are you going to keep asking me questions you can just as easily get directly from my memories?_

_The more I move around inside yer memories, the harder it is to remember who I am. I'm not going to forget myself inside yer mind._

_I only wish I could forget you. _

The loudspeaker announced boarding for first class passengers and people traveling with small children from Rome to London. Walter stood behind a woman who was trying to juggle a toddler, car seat, diaper bag and her carryon single-handedly. The child stared over her shoulder at the man with the ponytail and monocle and gaped.

He reached out and chucked the child under the chin, "There's a good lad. Are ye being good for yer mum?"


	6. Curtain Call

"Master?"

Vladimir looked up from reading a report about the deaths of the various Iscariot members and frowned at Seras. She didn't usually address him that way when he was wearing this face. "What is it, _Captain Victoria?" _Emphasizing her title to remind her to keep up appearances.

"I've been thinking, and Pip and I have been talking about it, and I'm ready to drink your blood and be a true nosferatu. If your offer still stands, of course." Seras did a fairly good job of not looking nervous. With the lessons that the war had taught her and Pip's unconditional support and guidance, Seras had come a long way from the Police Girl she'd once been.

Vladimir looked sharply at the door behind Seras and it locked itself with a sharp click. He rose from his seat and as he did so, his hair darkened and waved loose around his head, his skin lost its honey hue and took on the pallor of the undead and his eyes shifted from blue to red. The man who had been sitting behind the desk had been Sir Vladimir Hellsing, leader of the Hellsing organization; the man who walked across the room to regard Seras appraisingly was Alucard, Hellsing's ultimate weapon.

"And why are you asking now? Are you afraid of Walter and what Millennium's little boy says?"

"Yes. I am." Seras didn't back down from Alucard even though part of her wanted to. "I'm afraid of Walter, especially if Paladin Anderson's inside him and he can use those knives. I want to do what I can to protect myself, including taking this step." The thought of their last meeting and the way he had acted still chilled her. He had been so… so casually monstrous. Shouldn't evil be a bit more _intense? _

Solemnly, almost grimly, Alucard looked down at her. "You do have a strong sense of self-preservation." He approved. She'd started out very slowly in her trip through undeath, but she was a survivor as her decision demonstrated to him once again. Having the mercenary's soul to bolster her own had clearly done her more good than not. Eventually they'd tire of their arrangement and the Frenchman would either have to move on, or Seras would absorb him like any lesser soul. It didn't matter much to him which happened, but he looked forward to seeing it when it did.

Alucard took off his coat, set it aside and rolled up a shirtsleeve. "Don't just stand there, take it." He held his arm out in front of her face, "This is what you wanted. Take it or stop wasting my time."

"I don't have to do anything else? Just drink your blood?"

"Nothing else."

Seras took Alucard's arm, holding it at wrist and elbow and looked up at him. Pip spoke up within her mind. _Just do it, girly. We have to be strong if an insane butler paladin wants to kill us to destroy Alucard. _

With no further hesitation she bent over his arm and sank her fangs into the cool flesh. Her hands clamped convulsively on his arm as the first flow of power hit her. For the briefest moment, she could feel the souls inside of her master and was both appalled and awed by the sheer number and variety of them before she became aware of their ruler. Seras had never had this kind of exposure to what really went on behind the mask of sanity that Alucard usually wore.

By the time she released his arm and stumbled back, tears were flowing down her face. _Oh god, Pip, I don't want to be like that! Please don't let me be like that!_

Alucard watched her expressionlessly while he rolled his sleeve back down and put his great red coat on again. "You have everything I can give you now. Don't shame me."

Seras looked up at him in shock. How could someone like him feel any shame for anything? _Shh, Seras, you couldn't have seen everything that he is in just one quick look. _

One quick look was more than enough. _Then why did he only show me the monstrous part?_

_You're asking me? The important part isn't what you saw, it isn't what you're scared of someday in the future, it's what we have to worry about now. Let's keep you from losing your head to Walter and then we'll try to figure out how to keep you from losing your mind in the future. _

"If you're done having a conversation from which I'm excluded, I still have work to do." In the moment between speaking and turning to walk back to his desk, Sir Vladimir was back as though Alucard had been nothing but a hallucination. "Captain Victoria, there have been reports of ghouls in Alphamstone. I will expect your troops to deal with the trash and you will report to me with your success."

He looked at the photograph of Alexander Anderson's body, just as Schrödinger had described it. "What have you done with Millennium's turncoat?"

Seras turned with her hand on the door handle. "Schrödinger, Sir? You said he couldn't stay here at Hellsing, so I found him a cottage down the road. I wanted to keep an eye on him."

Vladimir nodded, "Remind him that he will be permitted to live as long as he creates no ghouls nor kills humans.

"Of course, Sir." She turned again to leave.

"Captain Victoria."

Seras suppressed a sigh and turned around again, "Yes, Sir?"

"Wipe the blood off of your face before you leave." He smirked when she put her hand to her face and it came away wet with bloody tears. "We can't have the troops thinking I made their commander cry."

•••

Seras sat down across from Schrödinger in his tidy little sitting room. He just looked so damned young and innocent. It was too easy to forget that there was a calculating and very adult mind behind that cheerful boy's face.

"Sir Vladimir wanted me to remind you of the rules for your continued existence. You may live here as long as you kill no humans. The first dead human, or worse, ghoul, that is your fault, I will personally feed you to Alucard if I don't kill and eat you myself."

_I don't want to share space with him._

_Oh hush, you wouldn't be sharing space. He'd go where the other souls go. You're special and you know it. _

_I know, mignonette. I also know you're getting tired of only me for company. It does get lonely sometimes, doesn't it? _Pip sounded almost wistful.

_I just want someone else to talk to now and then. I think he does, too. You'll always be my first and only love. _She smiled at Schrödinger, but the smile was entirely for Pip. _Besides, now that I'm a true nosferatu, I think I can figure out this shape changing thing. We'll see about switching off now and then. I know you want your body again. We can at least figure out how to let you have it part time. _

Schrödinger was unaware of the conversation was carrying on without him, but it was clear to him that her attention was elsewhere. He rolled his eyes at her threats. "I'm here. If I wanted to just wander around killing humans and leaving a trail of ghouls, I wouldn't do it right inside the territory of the most powerful vampire on earth."

She glanced down at the cell phone she held in her lap. She still hadn't heard back from the team she'd sent to Alphamstone.

"Seras Victoria, are you listening to me? You came to threaten me, the least you can do is pay attention to the person you're trying to intimidate."

"What? Oh, I'm sorry, that was rude of me, you're right." Seras picked up the phone as though holding it would make it ring then set it back down. "Right. You won't attack humans because you're smarter than that. Good. But why are you here? Why not somewhere else where you're in less danger?"

Schrödinger curled up in a corner of the couch and shrugged. "I've never had to work alone. I've spent my whole life working toward a cause that was promptly destroyed when it was set out in the world. I don't want to be a vampire hunter, but I don't want to be alone either. I can't reproduce. None of us could do it on our own. Only Doc could make more of us. So, if I want companions, I have to find them where I can. You're it."

Pip didn't buy his explanation and stepped forward in their mind to speak, "If that's the case, why did you protect her that day? You said you did. Why?"

"Do you remember the first time we met? That day with the Queen? The day your Master blew my head off?" He waited for Seras to nod. "I don't know what it was, but I just…" He shrugged again. "I didn't want you to die and when I had a chance to help you, I took it. Millennium was over anyway. The Major dismissed me, remember?"

Seras remembered. Moments after that, she ran off into the mayhem that was London, leaving Integral alone to her doom. She rubbed her hands across her suddenly chilled arms, and jumped when the phone in her lap let out of shrill ring.

"Yes? All of them? You're sure? Right. I'll be there right away." She clicked the off button and made a new phone call, heedless of the catboy's obvious curiosity.

"Sir Vladimir? Yes. I just received a report that the team I sent to Alphamstone has been wiped out. Yes, Sir. Yes, it sounds like the start of another Cheddar. Yes, I'm going to deal with it straight away. Yes, Sir, I'll report back to you when it's cleaned up." Seras clicked the phone closed and looked at Schrödinger. "I have work. Stay out of trouble."

•••

It was eerily like Cheddar. Seras couldn't help but be reminded of the night she lost one life and gained another as she swept through the ghouls that filled the streets of the tiny town. There had been fewer than two hundred residents in Alphamstone, and it seemed to Seras that every one of them was now a ghoul.

It was almost too easy for her to start at the edge of town and work her way inward, destroying the ghouls methodically. The town was so tiny that there was only one street through the center of town anyway. Despite the numbers, she didn't understand how her team had been destroyed. Even more than a hundred ghouls shouldn't have been too much for her well-trained and well-armed men to handle.

The war had taught Seras to put her feelings aside to do what needed to be done. She didn't take pleasure in destroying the mindless undead that wandered the hamlet, but neither did it pain her; she was too distracted by concern for her men and a need to find the vampire who was the inevitable source of this contagion. She had yet to see her men in any form, dead or ghouled. Where were they?

_Of course, it had to be the church, didn't it?_ Seras groaned inwardly. _Why does this have to be so much like Cheddar?_

She walked inside the church. There were her men, sitting quietly in the pews, and standing behind the podium, facing away from her was a man in black whose presence screamed _vampire!_ even though he had not moved to face her yet. The only thing missing was a helpless police girl dangling from his grasp.

Seras leveled her gun and squeezed off a shot at the vampire. It didn't matter whether his back was turned or not. He knew she was there, he was a vampire and courtesies like not shooting him from behind were more than he deserved after what he'd done to this town.

_Shit fuck!_

Seras tried to follow his movements, but he was fast even for a vampire. The bullet had left the barrel of her gun and her target had moved out its trajectory as though she'd thrown a paper airplane at him, not a deadly piece of blessed silver encasing an equally deadly sphere of mercury.

She finally saw whom she was facing and suppressed a small shriek of terror. Walter now stood in the middle of the aisle between her and the altar, smiling genially.

"Excellent, Miss Victoria, I was counting on your arrival before your Master's." Walter walked down the aisle toward her, casually flicking bullets out of the air with his wires while Seras took up a steady stream of fire before she had to ditch the empty clip and jam another one home. "Is that all you've learned since I saw you last? The only remaining offspring of the world's most powerful vampire and all you can do is throw useless bits of metal at me?" He made a tsking sound and suddenly lunged forward into a roll that brought him in under her fire and inside her guard.

The gun clattered to the ground when Walter aimed a fist at her face. Seras shifted faster than she ever had before and his hand passed harmlessly through her shadows. She reached out with shadows that she made more solid, trying to grab and restrain those deadly hands of his, but he was faster than she and turned to face her from the center of the church once more. Even fully alert and prepared, his movements had been little more than a blur to her.

_Shit, girly, let's get our asses out of here before he hands them to us on a silver platter!_

Seras was all in favor of leaving and letting Alucard handle this particular vampire. She began to slip her shadows under the door when Walter spoke again, but it wasn't his accent or his words, "Enough of this. We're not letting her get away just because ye like to play."

Seras gasped in pain and the sudden shock of returning to solid form when a silver blade thunked into the door and pinned a page there. She whirled around to see Walter throwing knives around the church, pinning more of those pages to the walls. He turned back to her and the grin that spread over his face was not nearly as terrifying as the piercing green of his eyes. She knew that smile and those eyes, and her hand went to her throat reflexively. It was true – the paladin and the vampire were together.

•••

Alucard stood on the road outside the church. Seras might not be his servant any longer, but their blood ties would always be strong. He had felt her terror and then her pain and followed them here. He could smell her blood anointing the stones that ringed this church. They looked like nothing more than small ornamental boulders, but there was a sense of old power that radiated from them. No matter, the power he felt from them was also incomplete, and after a quick walk around the church, he saw no more stones to complete the circuit. Either his enemy was a fool who was using an incomplete tool, or the final ingredient was inside.

There was only one person who was likely waiting inside for him. Alucard walked up the front path. Far be it from him to avoid a reunion with an old friend.

He was nonetheless surprised to see Seras sitting in a pew just inside the door of the church. He had to push through a familiar feeling barrier to enter the building, and the knives and pages pinned to the walls of the church told him an interesting story. He looked down at Seras where she sat. He realized now that she was tightly bound with Walter's wires with one loop wrapped around her neck and ankles preventing her from trying to even move out of her hunched over sitting position unless she wanted to decapitate herself.

He reached out and placed his hand on her head before advancing up the aisle. "Your little Vatican tricks aren't enough to keep me out, Judas Priest." He called to the man sitting in the front pew, his presence easily distinguishable from that of his ghouls. "And your wires won't be enough to stop me, Walter."

He walked toward his old enemy and even older companion. "I thought you were smarter than that."

"I do believe that I am, Alucard," Walter responded as he rose from the pew and stood at the head of the aisle.

"I think this is the part where we have a little talk about our old friendship before trying to kill each other." Alucard smiled toothily. "Do you want to skip that and move right on to trying to kill each other?"

Walter raised an eyebrow, "You don't want to hear about my homicidal adventures and how I ended up with your dear friend Alexander Anderson as an eternal passenger?"

"I can get that from your soul when we're finished, Angel of Death." Alucard raised his guns and began firing.

The podium and wall behind Walter splintered and huge holes gaped in them where Alucard's bullets impacted, but Walter was not there. He threw up an insubstantial shield that flickered occasional bright flashes of reflected light and swept Alucard's next salvo harmlessly out of the air.

"I made those guns, Alucard. They won't be the tools to kill me."

"But it's so much fun to try them out on you." Alucard fired again, almost casually destroying a handful of ghouls as the bullet plowed through them only to be cut to pieces before impacting its actual target.

Walter sidestepped the next volley and stood again at the head of the aisle. "Indeed. This is rather entertaining." He flicked a wire out down the aisle and cut the end off of Alucard's Casull. "I was never fully content with the design of that one." Alucard cut the next wire out of the air with a well-timed shot from his Jackal.

Walter's face changed and he growled, "Would ye two stop talking and finish this?" The red flash of his eyes had changed to a green glint.

Alucard's grin broadened. "Oh you do have a powerful presence inside the Angel, don't you Iscariot? How does it feel to be what you've always killed?" He snorted, "Less than that, you don't even have your own body, you're just a parasite."

Pip was distracted from trying to figure out how to get free of their bindings by Alucard's comment, _Hey!_

_Shut up, I don't want to attract their attention. Let Alucard finish him off first._ Seras was confident in Alucard, no matter what Walter did or had done. She just wished that he'd do something about Anderson's writ so she could turn to shadow and escape.

"Ye're a fine one to talk about parasites, beast." Anderson said with Walter's mouth. He pulled a handful of bayonets out of thin air. _I still don't like defiling a church with your pagan tricks. _

_Oh do shut up, Alexander. I thought this wasn't really a church by your standards, since this isn't Catholic. _

He threw the bayonets. Alucard shot the one that was going to hit him out of the air, but glanced over his shoulder at a cry of pain from Seras. Two of the blades had struck her in the shoulder and chest, and blood poured from the wounds, puddling on the pew and dripping onto the floor under it.

Alucard felt the incomplete circuit he'd sensed outside close. The feeling was stifling and he realized that he was cut off from most of the power that made him so dangerous. It was like being fully sealed again.

He turned, hair waving around his head like it had a life of its own, and looked at Walter. "What did you do?"

Walter put his finger to his lips, "Shh. Do you hear it?"

Alucard did as Walter said and heard the sound of a heart beating in the church. There were no humans here. Just three vampires and a few remaining ghouls. He stepped backward down the aisle toward the pew where Seras slumped on her side now, while keeping close watch on Walter's actions. The man seemed content to just watch him for the moment.

The heartbeat was coming from Seras? No, under Seras, under the pew where she sat. He chanced a quick look under the pew and saw the last of the stones that must complete the stone circle outside the church. They had built a Christian church on top of a place of pagan power and even gone so far as to incorporate the center stone into their building. On top of the stone that had been drenched in Seras' blood, sat a human heart, beating as steady a rhythm as though it were still inside its owner's chest.

"You're just another vampire now, Alucard. Now we'll fight as equals and see who's better." Walter watched Alucard with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Alucard's face twisted in fury and he advanced down the aisle, firing his gun with each step. "You killed Integral to use her for _this?_ I'll see you in hell!"

Walter easily evaded Alucard's shots and playfully flicked a wire out to lash across Alucard's cheek, drawing first blood. "This was just a happy side effect of what I admit was an impulsive action."

Alucard dropped his clip and slammed another into his gun and kept firing. The time for friendly banter was over. He knew that he was unlikely to hit Walter with his bullets, but he intended to exhaust that option before having to initiate combat that would bring him closer to those wires. The bullets that Walter didn't fragment with the wires smashed through walls and windows, leaving huge holes behind. He would bring this church down around Walter's head before he'd allow his former companion to escape here with his life.

After loading and firing his last clip, Alucard threw his gun aside and pulled Anderson's bayonets out of Seras' body. She moaned in pain, but he knew that she was strong enough to survive the wounds. She was not just his child, but a full nosferatu, after all.

"Come on Walter, Judas Priest, let us finish this." He grinned fiercely and rushed his enemy.

A few of Walter's wires managed to draw thin lines of blood on Alucard, but he was able to use Anderson's own weapons to keep the wires from finding a purchase that would allow them to do more than superficial damage. He grinned when Walter danced back from his charge and only narrowly evaded a deadly slash from a borrowed blade.

Walter whipped the wires from his right hand back into his rings and allowed Anderson to join him. A sword appeared in his right hand and he blocked Alucard's next thrust with a resounding clang of metal on metal. "Ye're not so tough without yer devilish trick, are ye, abomination?"

"You're a fine one to talk about abominations," Alucard growled at the other vampire who glared at him with one green eye and one red. He spun and slashed across Walter's side, drawing blood and a grunt from his opponent, but he paid in blood when he blocked Anderson's sword but failed to take into account the wires in the man's other hand. Quick thinking let him sacrifice a bayonet instead of an arm, but now he was down to a single weapon.

The two vampires circled and feinted. Alucard had to keep moving to avoid being entangled, which led them around and through the church leaving splintered pews and splattered ghouls in their wake.

•••

Schrödinger wasn't sure if he regretted the curiosity that had led him to witness a once-in-a-vampire's-lifetime battle. He'd just wanted to see what sort of work Seras did when she wasn't in the middle of a war. He hadn't planned to do anything else. He was much better as an observer than as an actor, but this was an exception.

He'd felt the circle close and peeked into the church through one of the many holes that had opened in the walls. His eyes widened when he saw Walter and Alucard battling hand to hand through the church, but he didn't see Seras anywhere. After moving from hole to hole, he eventually found one that let him see her where she lay in the pew.

He swallowed and winced. This was going to get him hurt, if not killed, if he wasn't careful. He waited until the two combatants were engaged at the front of the church and tried to teleport inside. It was like trying to walk through a brick wall – useless. Whatever Walter had done to keep Alucard inside the church also kept him from just teleporting out.

He ran around to the door and peeked around the corner. Alucard hadn't closed the door when he came in and he could see Seras just feet away. Steeling himself, he ducked around the corner and hid behind the pew in front of Seras while he looked her over. She wasn't bleeding, although she had done quite a lot, but when he tried to find a way to unwrap the wires binding her, he only succeeded in cutting his fingers on them.

He looked up over the pew again to assure himself that the two vampires were still absorbed in their duel. He scooped Seras up in his arms and scuttled out of the church. Either of the others may have noticed him, but they seemed to be too absorbed in trying to kill each other to worry about him or Seras. _At least, not yet._

Outside, Schrödinger tried to carry Seras out of the circle around the church and was brought up short by a barrier he could not pass, even by teleporting. He and Seras were trapped inside this circle until it was broken or they were killed. He knew which he hoped for. He picked Seras up and carried her to the small copse of trees that grew inside the circle. It was better than sitting out in the open waiting to die.

"I'll be back," he whispered and went back to watch the battle.

Under Seras' now empty pew, Integral's heart continued to beat a steady rhythm.

•••

Both combatants had noticed Seras' rescue, but it was entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand – mutually assured destruction. Walter and Alucard fought their way onward through the church. Or was it Anderson and Alucard who fought?

The point was overall moot as to who was driving Walter Dornez's body at any given time. He moved with deadly grace through the church, wielding sword and wires with equal skill. Alucard pressed an attack against his opponent, his disadvantage with his weapon compensated for by more than four centuries of experience in combat.

Both vampires bled and healed again and again. The church around them was more wounded than they were – the stains of the blood they had shed looked like blood the church had shed from its own wounded walls and pews. Alucard grinned with the challenge and Walter met the display of teeth with one of his own. If their observer hadn't known how deadly serious their battle was, he would have thought they were two friends sparring.

Having fought their way to the rear of the church, Alucard was able to retrieve another of Anderson's thrown bayonets from the wall where it had lodged. The tide of the combat seemed to turn with Alucard once again more suitably armed until Anderson's sword penetrated Alucard's guard, He buried it deep in Alucard's chest where he knew the vampire's black heart did not beat.

Alucard grinned and twisted his body, wrenching the sword free from Walter's grasp, even as his wound splattered more blood on the floor and pews. He looked down at the blade protruding from his chest, "That's not even close to enough to destroy me."

Walter matched Alucard's grin one final time, "But this is." He lunged, manifesting yet another of Anderson's limitless blades and skewered the heart that had continued to beat under the rear pew throughout their battle. "Your blood, your child's blood and your Master's heart and blood. Good bye, Alucard."

Outside, he could hear Seras' scream when blood began to pour from the wound in Alucard's chest. Alucard looked down at the spill of blood and looked back up at Walter. "At least it was you who did it, Walter, old friend." He staggered and went to his knees.

Walter walked to stand over Alucard to watch him die at long last. He had time to wonder what he would do with himself now that his obsession was complete. As he expected, Alucard lunged up for one final attempt to take Walter with him into final death. Walter tried to step back but Anderson clamped down on his body just long enough for the blessed blade Alucard held to find his heart.

_We've done our duty, Walter. It's time for us to escort Alucard to hell. _

Walter fell to his knees in front of Alucard and had the briefest flash of a thought, _What have I done? _before death came to take them both.

•••

Sir Vladimir sat at his desk speaking quietly on the phone. "No, Your Majesty, we've had no difficulties with the transition. No, no one has noticed at all. Yes, Your Majesty, you have my undying loyalty. Yes, thank you very much for your faith in me."

He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair and smiled at the small vampire sitting in the chair across from him. "Her Majesty expressed her faith in my ability to function without Alucard." He relaxed in his office chair and where Sir Vladimir had sat, Seras Victoria now stood up and commented to Schrödinger, "I really hate wearing that body."

* * *

_AN: The church in Alphamstone exists almost exactly as described. It sits in the middle of standing stones with the last of the stones just inside the church under a pew on the back wall. And yes, I know that the original Dracula's first name was not Vladimir. What Hellsing would name their child after Dracula, even a Hellsing that only existed in Alucard's mind when he created "Sir Vladimir?"_

_Thank you very much for reading this. I know it's been bizarre and that I took a really long time between chapters four and five. Five was very hard to write. Leave me a review if you've gotten this far and tell me what you did or did not like. I **love **concrit because without it, I can't grow as a writer. _


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